Onboarding is a vital part of your hiring activities, helping new hires acclimate to their role, their coworkers, and the company culture. It also helps with retention, as a company with good onboarding processes can see a retention rate of 69% in the first three years.
But 22% of companies have no formal onboarding program, and only 49% have some onboarding processes in place. That can leave new hires feeling less equipped to do their job and make it harder to feel like a part of the team and the company.
Onboarding is a process of integrating new employees into your organization. It starts as soon as a candidate accepts your job offer. Let’s talk about the steps of onboarding and why they’re essential.
Pre-Onboarding
Implementing pre-onboarding activities into your hiring process can help ramp up new hires before they start. Pre-onboarding is the perfect time to have them fill out all the paperwork that often distracts them during their first day on the job. It’s also an opportunity to continue the conversation about your organization, its culture and values, and where they fit in. Going over what their first days and weeks will look like helps alleviate any anxiety they may be feeling about starting a new job. With the right expectations and most of the paperwork already completed, pre-onboarding helps set up your new hire for a great first day. Get creative and consider doing something special to welcome your new hire before they even arrive. You could send them a handwritten note along with some company swag a few days before their first day. Working with an outsourced HR company like Employco can help you ensure you have the right paperwork and processes to facilitate pre-onboarding activities with your new hires.
Welcoming New Hires
It’s your new hire’s first day in the office, and whether your office is remote or in a physical location, this is the time to welcome them. This first day is about orientation and making sure they know who people are and where to go for things they need. If you have a physical location, have a coworker or team member give them a tour and show them where things are located, such as parking, restrooms, breakrooms, meeting spots, and different groups and offices. If you’re remote, give them an online tour of all the places they can interact with teammates and coworkers, and help them get set up on your company’s communication platforms. Work with them to set up their workstation and make sure everything is up and running. This is also a perfect opportunity to share more about your company culture and any fun team-building events you host regularly. Finally, this is the time to introduce them to the team and the company overall, whether it’s a company-wide announcement, a virtual meetup, taking them to meet their teammates in their offices or even out to lunch with co-workers they’ll be working with directly. Finally, making sure your new hire has a coworker they can reach out to whenever they have questions or need assistance is a great way to make them feel welcome.
Role-specific Training
The performance of employees is often directly related to the quality of their training. Now that you’ve welcomed your new hire and they’ve finished orientation, it’s time for training. A defined training plan helps set expectations for what training entails and what to expect. It shows employees that the company cares about their development while assisting new hires to become productive quickly. Discuss what training entails and provide an orientation on how your learning system works, whether it is a series of formal courses or a combination of work on their own and work with teammates. Communicate with them regularly on how training is going and have a plan to assign work during the training process that helps support their integration into the team. Employco can help you create training plans with strategies to help employees quickly acclimate and ramp up into their new roles.
Onboarding is vital for any organization, enabling new hires to quickly adapt to your company culture, values, and work. Having the right processes and tools during onboarding helps set up your employees for success. Contact us for help designing and implementing your onboarding processes.